Law BY JOEY BERLIN


Documenting patient care in EHRs


PHYSICIANS WORK WITH TMB TO USHER MEDICAL RECORDS RULES INTO THE ELECTRONIC AGE


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Matthew Murray, MD, says recent changes to the Texas Medical Board’s medical records rules highlight that it’s the physician’s job to make sure electronic health record systems pull accurate clinical information from other sources.


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lectronic health records (EHRs) and the require- ments for maintaining


them present a seemingly endless array of complications for physi- cians — with penalties potentially awaiting doctors who don’t follow the Texas Medical Board’s (TMB’s) recordkeeping rules. Revisions to those rules, which


TMB adopted in the spring, at- tempt to underscore the impor- tance of accurate information in the data-saturated EHR system and make doctors’ electronic re- porting requirements clearer. TMB proposed the rule chang-


es to address three problems the board identified with EHRs:


1. Records for different patients that looked too similar to one another;


2. Relevant electronic communica- PHOTO BY JIM LINCOLN July 2015 TEXAS MEDICINE 53


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